Think Those New Dental Graduates Aren’t Coming?

The University of Kansas announced in February that it is continuing the work to establish a dental school on the Medical Center campus in Kansas City.

The University apparently feels strongly about a new dental school, because its work is continuing despite a lack of funding from the legislature. And in spite of the fact that, according to the ADA, dental school enrollment is at an all-time high with nearly 27,000 students enrolled from 2016-2017. In 2016, close to 6,000 new dentists entered the workforce.

When you consider that the number of practicing dentists in the U.S. is estimated at about 200,000, that dental school enrollment should give you pause. Assuming a 90 percent graduation rate, the number of U.S. dentists could easily expand by 8-10 percent over just the next three to four years.

And now the University of Kansas wants to add to the number of newly-mined dentists. To be fair, Kansas doesn’t currently have a dental school. Adding one simply makes economic sense for the state.

Yes, those new dental school grads are coming. Most of them are highly motivated to get to work quickly, because they have an average of $260,000 in dental school debt.

Destination: Corporate Dentistry

If you’ve been following the dental industry news, it won’t come as a surprise that the chains are expanding their footprints like never before. New dental school grads are flocking to corporate offices, lured by offers of tuition forgiveness programs, sign-on bonuses, and high starting salaries.

When that heavy student debt burden is gone, some of those graduates will choose to open their own practices or join group dental offices. Some will stay with the chain practices. It won’t matter to corporate dentistry. There will be plenty more hungry new dental graduates each year to fuel their expansion.

It’s not a question of if one or more dental chains will enter your market. It’s only a matter of time. And as you probably know, the corporate practices are unbeatable on price and availability. That’s bad news for the vast majority of dentists who do price-driven marketing.

The chains practices aren’t unbeatable; you simply need to learn to compete where they are weak.

Smart dentists have taken note. As Dr. Michael Abernathy, the Founder of Summit Practice Solutions wrote in his review of Colin’s book, “If you know what you’re doing, the corporate dentistry marketing machine has an enormous weakness it can never overcome.”

Dr. Darold Opp of Aberdeen, South Dakota wrote, “Not only can you outrun the corporate dentistry marketing machine, using the secrets found in this guide gives you the recipe you need to out run everybody.”

And Dr. Raleigh Pioch of Salem Oregon wrote, “I’m living proof that the strategies covered in this survival guide WORK. They work so well that they helped me take my practice from $800K to $3.2 million in just 6 years. We couldn’t stop the growth.”